


Before I Let You Go

by Isola_Caramella



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-14 21:48:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10544872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isola_Caramella/pseuds/Isola_Caramella
Summary: I have no bloody clue but I'll think of something





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Let the fic uploading spree begin :)
> 
> I own nothing and owe everything

Jaime watches as Brienne tucks the sleeping boy under her chin effortlessly; he is no more than three, if that, but tall. Long freckled arms and legs hang limp and boneless against his mother. He'd guessed, hoped, she'd be the one to show up today to meet with Addam if only to see her eyes again. Selwyn Tarth had handed all decision making for development on his beloved island to his only child and Jaime only had to wait to be in Brienne's orbit again.

The last time he'd properly seen her was the day she'd stumbled into the elevator, ready to leave the Red Keep and Lannister & Lannister for the long Maiden's Day weekend. Cersei had pressed herself into him as much as reasonably allowed and said something cutting to Brienne at the same time Brienne's phone had let out a sharp barking noise. Whatever had been sent made her body flame the darkest red Jaime had ever seen. Her blue eyes had darkened in a way he'd only imagined in his dreams after walking in on her in the corporate sauna after hours shortly after her internship had started. Under the fierce scowl a small smile threatened to take over her face and she'd ignored Cersei almost entirely after that. Typing furiously on her phone until the elevator doors opened into the downstairs lobby and a large black SUV pulled up at the curb and Brienne had slipped inside without so much as a backwards glance to him. 

Cersei had fumed about his creature not knowing her place and Jaime had wondered when someone had started to make her blue eyes darken. 

Two weeks later he'd come back from Pennytree and Brienne had vacated her internship effective immediately. Pod had said there was a family emergency and Jaime had waited for her to reach out to him but his silent, mocking phone remained free of any calls until he'd finally called Evenfall months later and a rasping voice had told him Brienne was fine but currently at rehab with her father. 

His life fell apart in short succession and trying to reach out to the disapproving, stubborn girl with the most astonishing eyes he'd ever seen fell into the ashes. Joffrey's accident had been the boys own fault, arrogance and impatience causing the horse to throw him. When the doctor had come in grim faced and requesting everyone to donate blood for the transfusion he'd marched down to the lab with Cersei and stayed behind when she'd gone back upstairs to wait for word. The lab tech had come out with her face apologetic saying how sorry she was that Jaime wasn't a match for Joffrey but that the blood bank had been contacted and suitable blood was being sent right away. A few soft smiles and softer words from the sick boy's uncle had given Jaime a crash course in blood types and killed thirteen years of falsehoods. 

Tyrion had felt no remorse in letting Jaime know that their sweet sister hadn't been remotely devoted to him, the blinded fool. After Joffrey's death, Cersei had turned to the wine bottle daily, far more bitter and caustic in her treatment of her other half, now found wanting. She'd laughed blackly when he threw the Kettleblacks and Lancel back at her, beaten his chest when he roughly took her on the floor the week of her dead son's funeral. The luster was gone and he was left with little. Children that were Lannister but not his in the least and decades of a life lived for someone else. He'd remembered Brienne then, had dreamed of her standing naked with a light leading him out of the dark hell he wanted to spiral into.

He'd flown to Tarth then, to go back for her, but the gods had a fresh hell for him. He'd sat quietly in the very back of the sept watching Brienne exchange cloaks with the nervous smile he'd found the most endearing. Her father sat in his wheelchair smiling, blue eyes shining adoringly up at his only child. Jaime was gone before the wedding feast moved to the tents outside and stayed at the only other bed and breakfast on Tarth. First light found him on the ferry back to the Stormlands and a flight to Golden Tooth to Addam's firm hug and nonjudgmental welcome. Tywin would have called him craven, too Tytos. Running away from a problem was unLannister and unworthy. He signed over his shares to Tyrion and left him with the majority of the firm, a last fuck you to their sweet sister before leaving her to her fate.

Now the balmy air of Tarth kisses him as he sits idly, watching the only other woman he'd loved, realizing too late that she had felt the same. A widow, a mother, her father's caretaker and the owner of most of Tarth. Addam had wanted the beachfront property outright when Jaime had finally convinced him it was a sound investment, Brienne had held fast to leasing only. The beach cottages would go up first and construction for the resort shortly after. It would be the only resort on Tarth according to Brienne and had to be her way or no way. His stammering, blushing wench was still stubborn but her spine had found Valyrian Steel to infuse it along the way. 

The green blur that was her car turns towards Evenfall and Jaime reaches for his phone, reaches Tyrion at his winery, confirms the transfer of funds and sips his white tea as the elderly former proprietor of his newly acquired bed and breakfast brings him freshly cooked rainbow fish and seasoned rice. She'd agreed to stay on to cook but Jaime would have to find someone else to do the day to day work. That would be the easy part, he thought of the girl he'd met one sorry night in a brothel, despair had oozed off of her and him in tandem. Maybe a fresh start would be welcomed. He didn't care; Brienne was here and he'd stay here until she had no use for him.


	2. Chapter 2

Brienne watches as her father holds Aegon on his chest as he draws deep satisfied breathes; finally able to sleep after being up all night in screaming pain. The ear drops had blessedly given them both relief and she was ready to fall into bed face first but her sleep had been uneasy since knowing Jaime was close. Had purchased Old Maery's bed and breakfast but had been nowhere near Evenfall.

She'd last had a good look at him the week before her father's heart attack, he'd been glued to Cersei in the elevator when Sandor chose to send an obscene picture of his cock with a bow that said _**Happy Maiden's Day (hopefully not for long)**_ with a stupid smiley face after it. She'd chastised him rapidly even as her heart raced thinking the security camera had to be aimed directly at her phone. Cersei had blathered on in the background but Sandor's texts had gotten vastly more crude and Brienne had vacillated between humiliation and arousal. She could feel heat radiating off of her with the force of her blush. Once outside he'd saved her a phone call by having the good grace to be there so she could skip the bus.

Her maiden status had remained mostly in tact. They made it as far as his blunt fingers pressing into her before the taste of his rum on her tongue had jolted her back to Harrenhal pub and Vargo spiking her drink. Three sips in and her phone had buzzed to life with Jaime's name and Brienne had stepped into a storage room and fell over a mop. The overwhelming nausea had made her bolt up and belatedly she saw the hurt in Sandor's grey eyes, tripping over an apology before the tears started. She'd buried the fight with Vargo someplace far away, had wanted to never remember why one side of her face had been sliced and why she didn't wear shirts below her collarbone. Jaime had found her cornered over the loud thumping of music and bass, members of the campus police not far behind him. Her idolization made sense to him then.

Brienne knew she was falling into the same trap with Jaime as she had with Renly. But where Renly had been courteous at the time when all she knew was scorn, Jaime was the knight come to save the fair maiden. Her heart had slipped out of place briefly before Cersei had breezed back in, calculating falsities and even more calculating beauty. It didn't take long after to realize the rumors held more than a kernel of truth. Jaime's own admission came down like falling bricks on her head. Sandor had mocked her when Jaime's name slipped from her mouth in almost every sentence in the beginning. His time as a personal bodyguard to Joffrey still fresh in his mind. But he'd gripped the table uselessly after she'd hiccuped through her misery. Rubbed the scarred side of her face with his rough hands. Asked if they were still in prison and grunted when she said yes, had visited the brother he despised a week later, told him three names and called their mutual hatred even.

Brienne had found out about Gregor's part in her attackers death at the funeral when a man the size of a mammoth had been brought to Sandor's burial plot. Their sister had reeled back in shock at how callously he'd mentioned the hit and low regard to adding more years to a life sentence to Brienne, made the prison guards drag him away before collapsing on the grass near her brother's freshly packed mound. Brienne had just felt guilt that he'd cared enough to want them dead, he was supposed to be a salve to help soothe the gaping ache not having Jaime had opened up. He'd instead filled places Brienne never bothered to consider.

The day her cousin Endrew called from Evenfall to say her father had been evacuated to Storm's End, Brienne had left everything on her desk at Lannister & Lannister. She withdrew from university and tendered her resignation in one day. The prognosis wasn't favorable and she watched her father attached to tubes and wires; shrunken and pale. Her inherited stubborn streak paid off when he was finally released, cardiac rehab, diet changes and home care for a few months. Sandor was on her door step with his duffle when Endrew pulled up the driveway. By the end of Selwyn's recovery Jaime hadn't registered in the forefront of her thoughts anymore but he remained somewhere tucked away.

Her wedding night had been as unexpected as the thought that she'd ever be married. Love hadn't registered as any of the reasons she'd said yes and that was the way she wanted it. Sandor was brutally honest, to the point of bruised feelings early on, abrupt, aloof and prone to pessimism but he was unquestionably loyal, and on equal footing with her. He'd still said the most crude things to make her blush, kissed her until she almost begged him to put her out of her misery but refused to take her under her father's roof. Until a ring had named him her husband and then he'd pressed into her with the gasp of a man given reprieve from the executioner. His smug, insufferable face when she had trouble walking the morning after earned him a glare that earned her time lifted against one wall of their now shared bedroom.

They were comfortable in their life together and if the occasional argument flared up because of his bruising honesty or her stubborn goodness they retreated to their corners of Evenfall or met in his converted gym to take it out on the punching bags or each other until one pinned the other with lips or hands that knew where to kiss, how hard to restrain. Sandor could lift her as easily as she picked up her pen and while he could be gentle, she craved when he was moody and petulant. He'd fucked her standing in the middle of the gym after a particularly ridiculous fight about her finishing school. His eyes had looked like hurricane clouds near the eye of the storm as he lifted her over and over again. She'd picked useless arguments more than she was willing to admit to.

The Stranger had been the one to show her the folly of her thinking. She hadn't loved her husband when she took his cloak or his name, her heart had still beat for a man who had never seen her as more than a capable intern who could do his bidding, keep his darkest secrets and who he could make careless japes of at his pleasure. As she watched Sandor get wheeled out of Evenfall in the zippered bag she had realized how little the words I love you had come from her mouth. How much she'd taken for granted because they had both been scarred forgotten things left in the cabinet.

Almost two years on and she still played the videos of him reading Dunk and Egg books to Aegon so their son would know his father's voice. The memory of Sandor slipping and hitting his head wouldn't be her son's lasting memory. She wanted the long hikes in the shadowed vales and the treks up the mountains strapped to his father's back. He was too young to be without his father, younger than Brienne had been when she lost the mother she no longer remembers.

Brienne turns to the window of her room in the East wing, still too weak to go back into the bedroom she shared with Sandor, finally admitting to herself that her unease isn't because Jaime is in Tarth, it's the guilt of wanting him to be there for her.


End file.
